A Frustrated Gingrich Looks Past Iowa and Lashes Back at Romney

Newt Gingrich, with his wife, Callista, campaigned Tuesday in Muscatine, Iowa.Credit
Daniel Acker for The New York Times

BURLINGTON, Iowa — With his candidacy battered by negative campaign ads and a disappointing showing in the Iowa caucuses, Newt Gingrich is adjusting his strategy to rescue his ailing campaign, aggressively swatting back at Mitt Romney, whose supporters have painted him into the box of a Washington influence-peddler.

Tired, frustrated and irritated, by his own account, Mr. Gingrich heartily agreed when a television interviewer asked him Tuesday if he was calling Mr. Romney a liar in claiming to be a conservative.

Speaking to supporters after finishing fourth in Iowa voting, Mr. Gingrich called Mr. Romney “a Massachusetts moderate who in fact would be good at managing the decay but has given no indication of his ability to change the culture.”

The increasingly caustic comments against Mr. Romney — Mr. Gingrich promised to go after him “every day” in another interview — risk reanimating images of the thin-skinned, angry politician of the 1990s that Mr. Gingrich was seeking to bury with recent vows to stay positive.

For Mr. Gingrich, finishing out of the win-place-show money in the Iowa caucuses may not mean the end of the race. He and other second-tier candidates and their supporters are rethinking their strategy and options, sometimes drastically.

A “super PAC” supporting Mr. Gingrich is planning its own more aggressive ads, starting in New Hampshire, which, following Mr. Gingrich’s lead, will target Mr. Romney by name.

“The target is so rich now, given the new parameters,” said Rick Tyler, a leader of the group, Winning Our Future.

“Newt is signaling the fact that his own campaign” will be going after Mr. Romney directly, Mr. Tyler said.

“We will echo what the campaign is saying about Romney’s clearly liberal record,” Mr. Tyler said. “He swore to uphold Roe v. Wade, drove jobs out of Massachusetts up to New Hampshire. Bain Capital was clearly designed to engineer business failures.”

But raising money for advertising in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, which all vote this month, will be a challenge for Mr. Gingrich, who depleted nearly all of the $9 million he raised in the final quarter of 2011 in Iowa.

Photo

A worker at Mitt Romney's Des Moines headquarters ironed out any wrinkles before the candidate's election watch party.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The barrage of anti-Gingrich ads that were so effective in eroding his support in Iowa are now familiar to voters everywhere through cable news, leaving him in a precarious position in New Hampshire, where polls this week placed him deep in the pack.

Mr. Gingrich’s state director in New Hampshire, where the candidate planned to fly by charter jet late Tuesday night, sent a message to supporters with the defensive headline “We’re Still Alive.”

Polls in South Carolina show Mr. Gingrich still with a lead, but they are weeks old, and he needs to worry about holding that conservative Southern state that he has identified as his firewall.

With the Iowa caucuses now past, one of Mr. Gingrich’s rivals for the same party base, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, was planning to go straight to South Carolina in search of fresh oxygen to survive. Another, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, announced he was returning home to reassess his campaign.

But Mr. Romney’s supporters are ready in South Carolina, too. Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, has already bought advertising time in South Carolina for a 60-second spot that attacks both Mr. Perry and Mr. Gingrich.

If Mr. Perry decides to continue, he may be better positioned than Mr. Gingrich to sustain a long effort: He raised $17 million during his first six weeks on the campaign trail and is likely to still have significant cash after the caucuses, even after spending millions of dollars on television advertising, most of it here in Iowa.

Mr. Perry had pointed to his money and campaign organization as reasons conservative voters should turn to him as their alternative to Mr. Romney. “This is a long election,” he said Monday. Iowa was “Mile 1 of the marathon, and I’ve run a marathon before.”

For Mrs. Bachmann, who trailed even Mr. Perry in the caucus standings, Iowa might seem like the last stop. The defection of her Iowa state chairman last week to the campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas added insult to injury for a candidate who this summer was briefly the darling of the Republican field.

On Monday, Mrs. Bachmann vowed to continue no matter how she did in the caucus and despite the challenges of a drawn-down campaign bank account and minimal organization. Her entire New Hampshire staff quit in October. She has a good organization in South Carolina to help her rally the Tea Party support she has long courted. She is also strong on national security, which plays well in the state, with its many members of the military.

“We bought our tickets to go to South Carolina,” she said.

The Bachmann campaign released a schedule with four appearances over three days in the state beginning Wednesday.

But even skipping New Hampshire for the more socially conservative South Carolina may not revive her prospects.

If Mrs. Bachmann struggles in Iowa with its many evangelical and social conservative voters, the second wind she hopes for in South Carolina could fail to rise.

A version of this article appears in print on January 4, 2012, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Frustrated Gingrich Lashes Back at Romney and Awaits the Next Round. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe